Ash Quotes - page 4

You have made The cement of your churches out of tears And ashes, and the fabric will not stand. (Edwin Arlington Robinson)
[I don't] care a twopenny damn what [becomes] of the ashes of Napoleon Bonaparte. View quote
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one's ashes, the gray scraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where I would never know, in the dark heart of New York. View quote
Sylvia Plath
A man, when he burns, leaves only a handful of ashes. No woman can hold him. The wind must blow him away. View quote
Tennessee Williams
I stare at this ceaseless, rushing crowd and imagine a time a hundred years from now. In a hundred years everybody here-me included-will have disappeared from the face of the earth and turned into ashes or dust. A weird thought, but everything in front of me starts to seem unreal, like a gust of wind could blow it all away. View quote
Haruki Murakami
Harry," she said quietly, "I know you must be angry." I burn things to ash and smash holes in buildings when I'm angry," I said. "I'm a couple of steps past that point right now. View quote
Jim Butcher
As well a well-wrought urn becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs. View quote
John Donne
Real victories are those that protect human life, not those that result from its destruction or emerge from its ashes. View quote
King Hussein
For ordinary books are like meteors; each has its moment, that instant when it flies shrieking into the air, like a phoenix, all of its pages ablaze. For that moment, that single instant, we love them; although they are mere ashes by then. Sometimes, late at night, we wander in bitter resignation through their congealed pages, whilst they go on insisting, with their wooden clattering, like a rosary, on their dead formulæ. View quote
Bruno Schulz
Fame to be sweet must resound in the ears of those we love, in the atmosphere of the land that will guard our ashes. Fame should hover over our tomb to warm with its heat the chill of death, so that we may not be completely reduced to nothingness, that something of us may survive. View quote
José Rizal
Okonkwo was popularly called the "Roaring Flame." As he looked into the log fire he recalled the name. He was a flaming fire. How then could he have begotten a son like Nwoye, degenerate and effeminate? [...] He sighed heavily, and as if in sympathy the smoldering log also sighed. And immediately Okonkwo's eyes were opened and he saw the whole matter clearly. Living fire begets cold, impotent ash. He sighed again, deeply. (Chinua Achebe)
One day I attempted to reach silence directly, with greater resignation, surrendering to the fate that governs any profound struggle. My millions of furious clawings became millions of grains of dust, of sand.. .A new geo-graphy lit my way, carrying me from surprise to surprise: suggestions of unusual combinations and molecular structures, of atomic phenomena, of the world of galaxies or of images in a microscope. The symbolism of dust - 'to be one with dust, here lies the profound identity, that is, the inner profundity between man and nature' (Tao Te Ching) -, of ashes, of the earth from whence we come and to which we return, of the solidarity born when we realise that the differences among ourselves are like those between one grain of sand and the next.. View quote
Antoni Tàpies
..the equivalence of sounds, gratings, scratches, explosions, shots, blows, hammering, shouts, resonance, echoes in space; meditation of a cosmic theme, reflection for the contemplation of the earth, of magma, of lava, of ash; battlefield; garden; play-field; destiny of the ephemeral.. .Far from the cliché people have of artists holding the baggage of necessary originality, personality, style, etc., that calls for an outsider's discussion of the works, for the author there is, foremost, a nucleus of thought that is more anonymous and collective and of which artists are but humble servants. This is surely the zone where wisdom is deposited, the wisdom that one may really find beneath all ideologies and the contingencies of this world. It is the impulse of our life instinct for knowledge, love and freedom that has been kept and fed by the wisdom of all time. View quote
Antoni Tàpies
A normal way that the American free market system has worked is that we have a process of unwinding. It's called bankruptcy. It doesn't mean, necessarily, that the industry is eclipsed or that it's gone. Often times, the phoenix rises out of the ashes. View quote
Michele Bachmann
Go for it is the only way to be accepted to the circle of cold skulls the circle of your forefathers: Gilgamesh Hector Roland defenders of the kingdom of no frontiers and of the city of ashes Be faithful Go. View quote
Zbigniew Herbert
Many of my Hamptstead friends may remember this 'young lady' [an ash tree] at the entrance to the village. Her fate was distressing, for it is scarcely too much to say that she died of a broken heart. I made this drawing [Study of Trees, pencil on paper, circa 1821] when she was in full health and beauty; on passing some times afterwards, I saw, to my grief, that a wretched board had been nailed to her side, on which was written in large letters: 'All vagrants and beggars will be dealt with according to law.' The tree seemed to have felt the disgrace, for even then some of the top branches had withered. Two long spike nails had been driven far into her side. In another year one half became paralysed, and not long after the other shared the same fate, and this beautiful creature was cut down to a stump, just high enough to hold the board. View quote
John Constable
It is no ready made article; it has grown through the centuries as native to our country and people as the oak, ash, or thorn. It has given her people freedom and taught them the difference between freedom and licence. That is the Constitution that is threatened to-day, not quite openly yet, by the Socialist Party in their conference, tendenciously by sketching a course of action which if it takes place means the destruction of the Constitution. You may dispute that as much as you like, but in effect taking away the executive power of the House of Commons is the way every tyranny starts. It is proletarian Hitlerism and nothing else, and it can be nothing else. I want you to realize it in time. View quote
Stanley Baldwin
Let's see the very thing and nothing else. Let's see it with the hottest fire of sight. Burn everything not part of it to ash. Trace the gold sun about the whitened sky Without evasion by a single metaphor. Look at it in its essential barrenness And say this, this is the centre that I seek. View quote
Wallace Stevens
Great Carthage low in ashes cold doth lie, Her ruins poor the herbs in height scant pass, So cities fall, so perish kingdoms high, Their pride and pomp lies hid in sand and grass: Then why should mortal man repine to die, Whose life, is air; breath, wind; and body, glass? View quote
Torquato Tasso
Fires that shook me once, but now to silent ashes fall'n away. Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day. View quote
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Life carries on In the people I meet In everyone that's out on the street In all the dogs and cats In the flies and rats In the rot and the rust In the ashes and the dust Life carries on and on and on and on. (Peter Gabriel)
O no, my heart can never be Again in lighted hopes the same - The love that lingers there for thee Has more of ashes than of flame. View quote
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Forget 'redeeming social value,' dirty pictures are fun. When I die I want my ashes sprinkled over a nudist camp. View quote
L. Neil Smith
The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love. View quote
Raymond Chandler
When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning-human meaning, that is-is defined by them. You have to admit that. View quote
Margaret Atwood